Alternative asset management giant Blackstone’s second-quarter income has comfortably beaten market expectations, with the venture benefiting from growing assets under management and reaping profits from its artificial intelligence (AI) bet.
The New York-based company’s Q2 inflows pushed total assets to USD 1.35 trillion. Distributable earnings, or profit available to shareholders, rose 26% on a per-share basis to USD 1.52, beating estimates of USD 1.35, according to LSEG data.
Deals to sell a stake in three data centers to Digital Realty and a majority holding in power infrastructure company Sabre Industries to TPG helped Blackstone push its haul from monetizing assets to USD 31.8 billion.
While market volatility, majorly due to geopolitical developments, had hampered some deals in the first quarter, Blackstone more than compensated for it in the second. During the period, it also completed the listings of advertising technology company Liftoff Mobile, a data center investment vehicle called Blackstone Digital Infrastructure Trust, and Indian office REIT Bagmane.
While betting heavily on AI, Blackstone is joining peer Apollo in a USD 35 billion financing for custom chips to be used by Claude Code creator Anthropic. As per the alternative asset management giant, nine of its top 10 best-appreciating investments are linked to AI, including a stake in Anthropic and its data center businesses. Blackstone took data center platform QTS private for USD 10 billion in 2021.
CEO Stephen Schwarzman said the firm had decided to “lean into the artificial intelligence megatrend.” He said the company becoming “a trusted partner at scale to many of the key innovators” had positioned it well for the future.
Worries that AI will disrupt software businesses, since 2026, have weighed on private equity and credit firms that both massively invested in and lent to those companies. This has contributed to scrutiny on the industry’s asset valuation practices. Wealthy individuals, whose assets represent almost a quarter of the total Blackstone manages, have sought to withdraw money from private credit funds in particular.
“The retail flagship Blackstone Private Credit Fund BCRED raised USD 1 billion in the quarter, down from USD 1.9 billion in the previous quarter and USD 3.7 billion in the same period of 2025. Net returns from private credit improved to 0.4% from flat in the first quarter but remained below 2.2% from a year ago, Schwarzman noted.
“Blackstone Private Equity Strategies and infrastructure fund BXINFRA, which are also offered to wealthy individuals, raised USD 2.4 billion and USD 861 million, respectively. Real estate investment trust BREIT, which started exercising a right to block investor redemptions in 2022, pulled in USD 1.2 billion,” he concluded.